“Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.”

I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don’t pay attention ’cause it probably has floated into somebody else’s head.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.

Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.

She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.

It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ‘Negro’ fraction.

Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.

Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.

When I start writing a poem, I don’t think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

I’m pretty excited for people to listen to the story of each song. It’s definitely like a giant book with different stories in it. They are all very child-like but also a balance between light and dark.

It’s so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs. We should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics.

I’d love to have three or four kids. But my mom always says: “Speak to me after you have your first”.

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.

Know when to lie to your kids.

I was thinking about naming my child Kanye.

I go with what I like and I generally just cling to things that are pastel and remind me of being a little kid. It’s just what it is right now, but I go through phases.

I go with what I like and I generally just cling to things that are pastel and remind me of being a little kid. It’s just what it is right now, but I go through phases.